Activists promise largest climate civil disobedience ever at Paris summit | Environment. Thousands of climate change campaigners have promised to blockade a major UN climate summit in Paris with what they say will be non-violent direct action on a scale Europe has not seen before. Grassroots groups from 350.org to Attac France are throwing their weight behind the “Climate Games” event for the landmark climate conference in December. The protests will involve 10 blockades, themed around “red lines” which they fear negotiators for the nearly 200 countries inside the summit may cross. Governments are meeting in the French capital in the hope of reaching an agreement for action on climate change after 2020. Campaigners have shelved earlier plans to prevent delegates leaving the summit until they reach an emissions-cutting deal that matches activist ambitions.
“The redlines idea strikes just the right balance between ‘shut it down’ and ‘do your job’,” the author and campaigner Naomi Klein told the Guardian. After that, the so-called Climate Games will begin. UK drops out of top 10 renewable energy ranking for first time | Environment. The UK has dropped out of the top ten of a respected international league table on renewable energy for the first time since it began 12 years ago. In its quarterly report published on Wednesday, EY said the new Conservative government had sentenced the renewable energy industry to “death by a thousand cuts” and investor confidence in the sector had collapsed because of policy changes over the summer.
An EY energy analyst said that “investors are scratching their heads” to understand the government’s policy changes in recent months, putting at risk the UK’s reputation as a “safe harbour” for investment. When the last rankings were published in June, the UK was sat in 8th place, but it has now dropped to 11th. Some environmentalists have described the period since the election of the Conservative government in May as the worst for environmental policy in decades. He added that it is “not very normal” for a country to drop by three places in a single quarter. Osborne ridiculed over 'cheap nuclear' claims | EurActiv.
EXCLUSIVE/ UK Chancellor George Osborne was criticised today (9 September) after claiming that nuclear power was “substantially cheaper than any other low carbon technology,” when defending government subsidies for the controversial Hinkley Point C project. Osborne was discussing plans for the £24.5bn (about €34 billion) project, at the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee. The deal with EDF guarantees the French energy giant a price of £92.50 (about €127.50) per megawatt hour (MWh). The “contract for difference” is roughly twice the current wholesale cost of power in Britain and will be paid from household energy bills. Academics and environmental campaigners told EurActiv that the government’s own data proved many low-carbon energy sources, such as renewables, were already cheaper than than nuclear power in Britain. The subsidy was branded “incredibly expensive” and a “bottomless pit” by Lord Turnball, a member of the UK’s second parliamentary chamber, during the 90 minute hearing.
E3G — Third Generation Environmentalism | Action on climate and energy. A $1 trillion investment vehicle for renewable energy. Wall Street (photo Ivo Jansch) A new report from Deutsche Bank predicts that the Yieldco, a finance vehicle for renewable energy, will attract more money than similar instruments that exist for oil and gas investments. Giles Parkinson of the Australian website Reneweconomy has the story. Energy Post highlighted recently why the YieldCo is likely to become a gamechanger in the energy sector. Listed finance vehicles for large-scale wind and solar projects are likely to rapidly overtake the oil and gas industry in the US, but may bypass Australia altogether if the Abbott government continues to send the wrong signals to investors. Deutsche Bank last week released a report which said the renewable energy finance vehicles – known as “YieldCos” – were likely to rapidly outgrow their oil and gas industry equivalents, and become an order of magnitude bigger than their fossil fuel rivals.
Lower cost of capital The market is underpinned by the huge growth expected in renewable energy. 8point3. Tutu, Klein and Chomsky call for mass climate action ahead of Paris conference | Environment. Desmond Tutu, Vivienne Westwood, Naomi Klein and Noam Chomsky are among a group of high-profile figures who will issue a mass call to action on Thursday ahead of the UN’s crunch climate change conference in Paris in December. They call for mass mobilisation on the scale of the slavery abolition and anti-apartheid movements to trigger “a great historical shift”.
Their statement, published in the book Stop Climate Crimes, reads: “We are at a crossroads. We do not want to be compelled to survive in a world that has been made barely liveable for us ... slavery and apartheid did not end because states decided to abolish them. Mass mobilisations left political leaders no other choice.” Bill McKibben, founder of environmental movement 350.org, which has launched the project with the anti-globalisation organisation Attac France, described the move as a “good first step” towards Paris. The book is a collection of essays, many published for the first time. Why : The Future. The future is here. The storm is now. We stand on the brink of climate catastrophe: of ecological devastation, of flooding, drought, disease, famine and war. It is time for us to act. Our politicians have been bought off and they are scared. It is time to make them hear us: to stand our ground non-violently. We are free citizens with power not consumers.
The climate has changed. We burn with boredom for the status quo. The storm is now. We are fury, resistance and hope. Climate Sense Appeal | Green Party Members' Website. Skip to main content Climate Sense Appeal In August 2015 the Green Party of England and Wales will be launching the Climate Sense Campaign on the build up to the UNs Conference of the Parties (COP21), which will be in Paris in late November, early December. This will be the biggest national campaign the Green Party has ever run. The campaign calls for the UK to have policies which make Climate Sense. To mobilise the support for this campaign we need investment. Please give and help the United Kingdom make climate sense! When you are ready to donate, just click the big green button. We need to ensure everyone hears about our campaign – what it means and what they can do.
Your investment in our digital campaign will allow us to advertise the campaign beyond our captive audience and allow for the production of digital campaigning resources such as the video so to push climate sense. We need £10,000 so we can reach over 5 million people on social media - please give generously. Apply here ! - Place to B - Paris COP 21Place to B – Paris COP 21. If you are a journalist, blogger, photographer, designer, graphic facilitator, code and hack specialist, maker, (news) gamer, entrepreneur, comedian, climate expert… and you want to join in the fun, welcome aboard! Place to B will be open primarily to those who want to follow the negotiations at COP 21 while having an HQ full of both inventiveness and diversity, with a different look.
Place to B is also looking for journalistic and artistic ‘makers’ to create a new story and spend a week or two to cover these negotiations in a different way, by offering new viewpoints. Place to B will also welcome those who, as a visitor, passionate, or amateur, want to attend some of our programming. So if the Place to B experiment is appealing to you and you want to be a part of it, we invite you to complete the form below.
Bookings are still OPEN until early September ! ZeroCarbonBritain - Latest report. Zero Carbon Britain: Rethinking the Future is the third report from the Zero Carbon Britain project, launched at the All Party Parliamentary Group on Climate Change event in July 2013. The report details a technically robust scenario in which the UK has risen to the challenge of climate change by rapidly reducing greenhouse gas emissions to net zero. It demonstrates that we can do this using only currently available technology, whilst maintaining a modern standard of living, eating well, and meeting our energy demand at all times with 100% renewable UK energy sources. This latest report includes the most up-to-date knowledge across a range of disciplines, and integrates new detailed research in two key areas: Balancing supply and demand: How to 'keep the lights on' with a 100% renewable energy system.Land use and low carbon diets: How to manage our land to eliminate emissions and provide a healthy low carbon diet.
Quick links Executive summary - Download | Read online. Paris 2015: Securing our prosperity through a global climate change agreement. In December 2015, the world will gather in Paris to secure a legally binding, global climate change agreement with emission reduction commitments from all countries for the first time ever. It will require courage, determination and ingenuity to deliver, building on years of hard work. It is not just governments around the world who want an agreement; there is widespread support from businesses, NGOs and campaign groups, many have contributed to this publication. A Paris 2015 agreement will create the vital framework the world needs to keep the global goal of limiting average global temperature increases to below 2°C within reach, and avoid the worst impacts of climate change. A global climate agreement is unquestionably in the UK’s and the entire global community’s interests and the prospects of securing a successful agreement next year have never been better.
This publication explains why. Paris 2015: Securing our prosperity through a global climate change agreement outlines: Bright Green.